(Robert Preidt/ HealthDay News) — No matter how tired you get during your pregnancy, a new animal study suggests that countering your fatigue with too much coffee might harm your baby.
Female rats that were given caffeine during pregnancy had offspring with lower birth weights, altered growth and stress hormone levels, and impaired liver development.
How much coffee is too much? The findings suggest that in pregnant women, consuming an amount of caffeine equivalent to 2 to 3 cups of coffee a day may change stress and growth hormone levels in a way that can impair infants’ liver growth and development. It may also increase their risk of liver disease in adulthood.
“Our work suggests that prenatal caffeine is not good for babies and although these findings still need to be confirmed in people, I would recommend that women avoid caffeine during pregnancy,” said study co-author Yinxian Wen, from Wuhan University in China (…)